


suspend your disbelief

by citrina



Series: i never wanted anybody else [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: And a heckton of OCs, Bakoda - Freeform, Bakoda Fleet Week, Homophobia, Humor, I spent so long making up and finding inuit names, M/M, Misunderstanding, Prompt: Reverse Fake Relationship/Reunion, Rated T for like one curse word, Siluk is an ALLY so jot that down, Sokka and Katara are mentioned, The SWT philosophy on homophobia is basically turn a blind eye :/, yall better appreciate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25638034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrina/pseuds/citrina
Summary: The other warriors tend to turn a blind eye to this sort of thing, but it’s starting to get a little ridiculous. Or, Bato returns from the abbey, and Hakoda is excited. Ft. my cast of OC Warrior Dudes™  invented over the series so far.
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda (Avatar)
Series: i never wanted anybody else [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852534
Comments: 11
Kudos: 132
Collections: Bakoda Fleet Week 2020





	suspend your disbelief

**Author's Note:**

> Bakoda Fleet Week Day 5: Reunion / Reverse Fake Relationship
> 
> Happy day 5! This one is more humorous than my usual... I'm branching out! This is set at some point between "Bato of the Water Tribe" (s1ep15) and "The Guru" (s2ep19). It's basically just all the Water Tribe warriors thinking that Hakoda and Bato are a thing. Meanwhile, Hakoda is the oblivious nerd we all know and love. This was really fun to write and I had a blast coming up with the OC characters! 
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own ATLA or any official affiliated content. If I did, then I would never have given Jet The Eyebrows™.

Here’s the thing: Siluk would like to consider himself a pretty open-minded sort of guy. Maybe he wasn’t, growing up in the village back home, but travelling in the Earth Kingdom has taught him a few things. 

But this is just getting ridiculous.

Siluk remembers what Hakoda and Bato had been like, when they were kids. After all, he’d been only a year younger than them, and good friends with both for his whole life. The pair had always been inseparable as long as he could recall. If one was in trouble for pranking the elders, or off hunting in the middle of the night, or preparing for battle, then the other surely was with him. It was just how things had been, back in the village. 

He remembers, vividly, Hakoda’s disastrous ice dodging trial. He’d been the third member of that fated team. He remembers how Bato had been sliced open by the rudder, and Hakoda had refused his mark on the basis that his best friend had been injured. Bato, quiet and pensive and passive Bato, had argued.

That had been the first sign, but by no means the last that Siluk noticed. 

It came in the form of Bato’s eyes, lingering just a moment longer than necessary on the other man during weapons training. It came in the form of Hakoda’s courtship and marriage to the elegant and serene Kya, whose calming presence had always reminded Siluk of a specific warrior. It came in the form of Hakoda’s two children, after the raid that took Kya’s life, still clean and cared for and healthy despite the loss of their mother. They clearly had another adult taking care of them, and it didn’t take much effort to guess who that adult had been.

Siluk had always suspected that Bato had long held a candle for Hakoda. Bato was tall and good-looking enough to have garnered dates if he’d tried, but Siluk had never once seen him so much as glance twice at a girl. He’d always felt a little sorry for his quiet friend, who was too shy to look elsewhere and too unlucky to be seen the same way.

But perhaps he’s not so unlucky after all. Perhaps they’re just better at keeping secrets than Siluk thought. 

Well, Hakoda’s clearly not very good at it at all. He’s pacing up and down the deck, reading through Bato’s latest letter. The paper has curled from being handled so much. His brow is furrowed, and he keeps tugging his beads, like he’s mentally composing a response. The crew is eating dinner and doing their level best to ignore him. He’s been like this all day, since the letter arrived in the morning.

“Siluk, my friend,” Hakoda says suddenly. “Do you have a moment? I have a question.”

“Of course, Chief,” Siluk says, already dreading what tactful answer he will have to give.

“Do you think--” Hakoda starts, then stops. “Do you know--? No. Never mind.” He resumes his pacing. Siluk sighs. Moon and ocean spirits, give him strength. His chief is so obvious, it’s embarrassing.

“What is it, Chief?” Sometimes, it’s like pulling teeth to get anything from this man. 

“Actually, can you read this? I want a second opinion.” Hakoda holds out the letter. Siluk stands and takes it, unfurling the soft-edged page. The letter reads:

'Dear, Hakoda--

Good news! As usual, it seems you worried too much. The Abbess says my burns are healing faster than she’d expected. Must be that waterbender lineage. Seems I’ll be by your side again in no time! And I’ll be glad to be out of the abbey soon. Everything here smells like flowers. It’s just from the perfume the nuns make, but it gets everywhere. Though as soon as I’m back, I’ll probably regret having to smell those terrible seaweed stink bombs you invented.

Thank you for sending the pelts with your last letter. They really do make my room here feel more like home. Where on earth did you find the snow-leopard caribou one? I know for sure it wasn’t on the ship at the same time I was. Did you buy it from traders especially for me? I’m touched.

Tell the others I say hello and that I miss you. If your course hasn’t changed, I’ll be sure to meet you as planned at Chameleon Bay. Just remember to send a map once you arrive! You know me: I could get lost three feet deep in some snow. We’re not all expert navigators like you, Chief.

Bato of the Southern Water Tribe'

“So? What do you think?” Hakoda gestures, a little frantically, at the letter. 

What I think is that this reads like a love letter, Siluk almost says, but he refrains from it. And from the way Hakoda is acting, he sees it the same way. How, though, is one supposed to be tactful about this?

The letter surprises him, because it doesn’t sound like the Bato he knows. Bato is normally laconic, Hakoda’s taller shadow. He participated in all of Hakoda’s antics as a child, yes, but always as a follower in Hakoda’s elaborate pranks. Hakoda had always been the darling of the village, handsome and funny and charismatic, but Bato had always seemed to Siluk to be a bit of a hanger-on, Hakoda’s faithful sidekick. He’s a respected warrior, sure, but generally people know him as Hakoda’s second in command. The Bato in the letter is charming, teasing, and openly affectionate. Like a wife writing her husband from home, while he’s off at war. Siluk gets plenty of a similar style from his own wife. 

“That’s why you bought the snow leopard-caribou pelt?” Siluk elects to say. “I thought that was for your own cabin.”

Hakoda drops his face into his hands, muffling his groan. “That’s what you’re choosing to focus on? Never mind,” he says, snatching back the letter. 

“Just saying, Chief,” Siluk shrugs. Hakoda folds up the letter and stuffs it into his pocket. Siluk sits back down at the table and picks up his chopsticks, cool as can be. 

Yeah. Siluk’s gotten pretty open-minded, if he doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at his chief’s apparent star-crossed romance with his childhood friend.

.oOo.

Hakoda is really, really excited. He can’t remember the last time he anticipated something so much. Maybe when Katara was born. Maybe when Sokka was, though that had been more nervous than excited. Maybe never.

Bato is coming back today.

He’d sent the map of their location once they’d arrived at Chameleon Bay a few weeks ago. He knows exactly how long it takes the average messenger, on ostrich-horseback, to deliver to the abbey (six days), and approximately how long it takes someone to sail back (eleven days, if they’re fast and diligent about it, which Bato is). That adds up to seventeen days. Today is day seventeen.

It’s been so long. Hakoda’s learned a lot since they last saw each other. He’s learned that he actually really likes Fire Nation food (they’d stolen dinner from some Fire Navy troops), and that komodo-rhinos move a lot faster than they look (being chased for stealing said food was not fun but kind of worth it), and that he’s actually in love with his best friend.

That’s probably the most important realization.

It’s nearly sunset. Bato should be here soon. Hakoda finds himself pacing up and down the beach, where they’ve set up camp. He’s filled with a mysterious, jittery energy.

He’s working himself up, he knows, but he can’t help it. But this ache, this emptiness by his side without Bato, will finally be gone. The other men, used to Hakoda’s antics by now, barely blink at the sight of his pacing. 

A speck of brown appears in the distance, barely a dot in the vast ocean. It could be a whale or an Earth Kingdom ship or anything else. But Hakoda knows, somewhere in his gut, what it is.

The dot gets closer. His heart squeezes tighter.

“Hey, Chief,” one of the warriors, Tiyuq, calls. “You gonna eat or what?” 

Hakoda glances at where the other warriors are settling down for dinner, sitting around a pot of delicious-smelling stew. The other day they’d discovered that, stewed just right, ocean kumquats taste nearly like sea prunes, and the warriors are certainly using the newfound knowledge to their advantage.

“In a minute,” Hakoda calls, distracted at the sight of the sailboat drawing nearer. It’s almost certainly a Water Tribe ship, now, the proud blue sails and whalebone bow visible.

“Who’s that?” Tiyuq calls, also noticing the boat drawing closer. 

“It’s Bato,” Hakoda breathes. “He’s here.”

.oOo.

Tiyuq doesn’t know very much about Bato. He knows that he’s a quiet, tall man, dignified in a way that only experienced warriors are. Tiyuq respects him the way he respects all of the older men. Tiyuq is one of the youngest warriors, at only nineteen, and had been a pal of Hakoda’s son Sokka before they’d left. Sokka had looked up to Bato as a second father.

The man who steps off the ship and flings himself into Chief Hakoda’s arms does not seem quiet and dignified. He looks like a man coming home, desperate and joyful. 

The warriors glance at each other in awkward understanding. They love their chief like they love their tribe, and so they will not judge this. Hakoda is proud and powerful and Tiyuq has always looked up to him, ever since he was a child and Hakoda was just their local chief, not even his military leader. It doesn’t matter how he treats Bato differently than the others; after all, he’s second in command, and everyone knows how close the two are. Suspension of disbelief is easy if you never talk about it.

Bato and Hakoda break the embrace a moment later, seemingly realizing how shameless the reunion appears to the rest of the warriors. They step back and grab each other’s arms elbow-to-wrist in the customary greeting a little sheepishly. Bato’s arm, Tiyuq notices, is heavily scarred, skin shiny and mottled from the burns that had kept him away for so long.

“It’s good to be back,” Bato says, nodding to the other warriors. A few others, mostly the older warriors, come forward to greet him as well. Tiyuq stays behind with the rest, the people who didn’t know Bato as well. 

“Is no one going to acknowledge the obvious?” One of the spearmen, Aluata, scowls. He’s a brute of a man, vicious with a spear and built like a buffalo yak. Tiyuq has never liked him much. He sighs. 

“No, we’re not,” says Inuksuk, one of the scouts. He’s slender and wiry, and one of the fastest runners in the whole fleet. Tiyuq’s never spoken to him before, but gossip knows no strangers.

“Well, we should,” Aluata spits. “I’ve known those two their whole lives, and let me tell you that they’ve only gotten less subtle as the years go by.”

“Subtle about what?” Tiguaak, the chef’s assistant, asks.

“Their little… arrangement,” Aluata says disdainfully. “Don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t, actually,” Tiyuq joins in, though he very much does. The rumors aren’t exactly quiet. But this is dangerous talk, and Tiyuq grew up next door to Hakoda’s family. He knows that he and Bato are nothing more than friends.

Very, very, very close friends.

Aluata makes a harsh scoffing noise. “Ttch, ever since the last raid,” he says, referring to the raid that killed Hakoda’s late wife, “I bet they’ve been fucking. Maybe before that, even. I’d say that Bato is the poodle-monkey, if you know what I mean.”

Tiyuq’s eyebrows shoot up. He wasn’t expecting such an explicit answer, but he supposes Aluata’s never been one for beating around the cherry-berry bush. This sort of stuff needs to be handled with tact.

“That’s a bold accusation, Aluata,” Inuksuk cuts in, hands on hips. Inuksuk is younger than Aluata by a decade and weighs about half as much, but he’s got a better disapproving glare than anyone Tiyuq knows besides his own mother. Its full force is thrown at Aluata, but he doesn’t flinch.

“Look, I just said what I said,” Aluata shrugs. “No need to get snippy about it.”

“So what, then?” says Tiguaak. “I’d still respect them both. They’re good warriors and good men. What they do in their own time is up to them.”

It would be nice, actually, if it were true, Tiyuq thinks. Being able to fight alongside your love, that is. Being sure when they were safe, and when they were not. Having some control over it all. Tiyuq had left his longtime girlfriend, Miki, when they’d left the South Pole. He doesn’t want her in danger, obviously, but he misses her constant presence, her blue eyes full of mirth and her clever crooked smile. Not a day goes by where he doesn’t worry about another raid like the one of his childhood, this time without men to defend the village.

Aluata raises one eyebrow. “Of course you’d say that,” he tells Tiguaak, who looks away. Tiyuq recalls that Tiguaak is from one of the inland villages, where he hears that “morals have declined” and “tradition has been eroded”, according to his mother. He also knows that Tiguaak is very good friends with Yura, one of the deckhands. Maybe very good friends the way Bato and Hakoda are very good friends.

“Aluata, stop harassing these young men and go back to your dinner,” Siluk, one of the senior warriors, appears suddenly behind his shoulder. Aluata jumps and scowls, but obeys, clomping across the beach in his snow boots (why won’t he just buy some Earth Kingdom shoes like the rest of them?). Tiyuq, Inuksuk, and Tiguaak all give Siluk grateful looks.

“Thanks, sir,” Inuksuk says with a respectful nod. Tiyuq and Tiguaak mimic him.

“No harm done,” says Siluk with a grin. “Aluata can get a bit… passionate, at times. But--” and here he pauses -- “I’d advise you three to keep this kind of gossip to a minimum. I know you all respect the Chief a great deal, and that applies to his privacy.” He gives them all a significant look.

“Yes, sir,” Tiyuq says. He knows Siluk is a friend of both Bato’s and Chief Hakoda’s; he wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.

After all, it’s fine to suspend your disbelief, as long as you don’t talk.

.oOo.

Hakoda had planned to tell Bato everything about how he felt, but then they got a little sidetracked.

“Wait, Sokka and Katara are WHAT?”

“They’re travelling with the Avatar. Who is a child. And also an airbender.” Bato looks like he’s trying not to laugh. Hakoda tries his best not to let his jaw unhinge from his face.

“Why-- what-- I don’t believe this!” Hakoda can barely formulate words.

“I know. I hardly could either, when they first arrived at the abbey. But trust me, Sokka has truly inherited your terrible sense of humor.”

“That is so not important right now!” Hakoda’s hands make a vague gesture. He’s not sure what it means. “What is the Avatar doing with my kids?”

Because yes, Katara is remarkable. She is the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe. And yes, Sokka is clever and brave and good at fighting. But they’re children, his children. And the whole reason Hakoda had gone to war was so that his kids wouldn’t have to.

“They’re going to the Northern Water Tribe to find Aang -- that’s the Avatar -- and Katara a waterbending master.” Bato shrugs. “They have a flying bison.”

“They have a WHAT?!”

**Author's Note:**

> How did I do? Please comment and tell me your thoughts! Visit me on tumblr at chief-yue.tumblr.com.


End file.
